ing, supercilious pretensions of infallible orthodoxy and bloated power were inseparably linked together, and both gave way or recoiled under the shock and encounter of the common nature and the common under standing of man. The first step to emancipate the bodies of the enslaved people was to enfranchise their minds; and the foundation of the political rights and independence of states was laid in the ruins of that monster superstition that reared its head to the skies and ground both princes and people to powder. The first blows that staggered this mighty fabric were given and the first crash was heard abroad; but England echoed it back with 'her island voice,' and from that time the triumph of reason over pride and hypocrisy was secure, though remote and arduous."—Hazlitt.
The undersigned have already published, and distributed throughout the country, the legal paper prepared by you as counsel in certain civil-rights causes. We felt that this declaration most forcibly presented in their constitutional aspect the true legal status of our civil rights as American citizens.
The civil-rights cases are scattered throughout various law reports, State and national, not readily accessible to the masses, who, therefore, are not in a position to form any proper estimate of the extent of the wreck of the Fourteenth Amendment, "freighted with the world's sublimest hope." We want all the opinions so collated and presented that he "may run that readeth."
What we desire is, not only a searching review of the most important decisions relating to this—to us—most vital subject, but a general discussion also, presenting the existing legal status of civil rights and an independent, broad, earnest, conscientious, critical survey of the legal relations between all classes of citizens and our race, particularly the social phenomena of the monopolistic labor-class, which, in spite of our civil equality, excludes the colored citizen from competition in all industrial arts. Fisher Ames expressed our meaning when he said, "We want the rights of man printed, that every citizen shall have a copy." The Hales, Mansfields, and Marshalls have all declared "justice to be the end and jurisprudence the means;" and if,
